EXCLUSIVE: Dirty Dancing writer ‘ready for sequel’

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Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze co-starred in the original Dirty Dancing

We last saw them having the time of their lives in Dirty Dancing, 1987’s sleeper hit about finding love, coming of age and learning to mambo.

Now, 30 years on, the writer of that film says she’s ready to bring Baby and Johnny back to the big screen.

“I am now thinking I might be ready to do a sequel,” Eleanor Bergstein told the BBC.

She added her characters were “very particular people who find a very particular reality with each other, and I do want to explore that now”.

Image copyrightEleanor Bergstein

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Eleanor Bergstein based the film on her own youth in the Catskills

Set in 1963, Dirty Dancing told of a teenager, Frances “Baby” Houseman, who has an affair with dance instructor Johnny Castle while staying at a Catskill Mountains resort.

The film starred Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze and won an Oscar for the song (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.

Audiences fell in love with the movie’s characters, music and its iconic dance routines, including the famous “lift”.

Image copyrightLionsgate

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The film’s climactic lift has become an iconic movie moment

In an interview to be aired on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Bergstein pointed out that her film also included an illegal abortion that has become all too topical in the wake of US President Trump’s election.

“All these things have come around again,” she told Samira Ahmed. “All these battles we thought in some way had been won… it’s come back now.”

Bergstein also said that were Baby around today, she would be out marching for women’s rights and Black Lives Matter.

“The thing that is so moving to me is that in cities all across America… everyone instinctively dropped their lives and went out on the streets.

“That’s what Baby would be doing now.”

Image copyrightAFP

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Bergstein says Baby would have been at the Women’s March had she been real

Swayze, who died in 2009, made a cameo appearance as a dance teacher in 2004 prequel Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.

A TV movie remake of the original film, starring Abigail Breslin and Nicole Scherzinger, is set to air later this year.